


The Last Goodbye

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Post-Series, Sexual Content, teenage sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:36:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon loves Sansa deeply, but even she thinks that he should accept Queen Daenerys's proposal of marriage.  When he does, though, it is difficult to tell Sansa goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

“You would be a fool not to do it,” Sansa said.

“She’s my aunt,” Jon said.  It was far from his main objection to marrying Daenerys Targaryen, but it seemed the easiest to say—irrefutable, uncomplicated.

“And I’m your cousin,” Sansa said. 

That was true enough.  “She doesn’t like you,” he said.

“Well, she’ll hardly like me more if you tell her that you want to stay here with me instead of marrying her,” Sansa said.  “It would be best, Jon.  For both of us.”

“I don’t love her,” he said.  _I love you_ was really what he meant, but somehow he didn’t want to say it.  He’d thought that she loved him too, but now, with the way she was urging him to accept Daenerys’s proposal, he couldn’t be quite sure.  And even if she did love him, she seemed determined to turn him away, and he didn’t know what telling her would do.

Sansa’s laugh was almost bitter; there were times, now, when she seemed very much like the girl she’d once been, and times like these, when she seemed as different as possible.  “When has that ever mattered, Jon?  When has this sort of thing ever been about feelings?  I’m sure she doesn’t love you either.”  Then her face softened a bit, and she nearly sounded wistful as she added, “But perhaps you’ll both come to, in time.”

“I won’t,” he said.  “You know I won’t, Sansa.  You know why I don’t want to do this.”

“I know,” Sansa said.  “And if things could be different, Jon…But they aren’t.”

“But you,” he said.  “What will happen to you?”

“I’ll be well enough,” she said.  “I certainly won’t lack for things to do here.  And there are…there are men enough who would be interested in me.”

Jon hated that she’d said that.  “That’s what I’m worried about,” he almost snapped.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” she said.  “I’m not a fool now.  I wouldn’t marry anyone cruel or anyone who wouldn’t be a good lord.”

“But you’d marry someone you didn’t love.”

“Of course I would!” Sansa said, and now she was almost snapping too.  “That’s what people do, Jon.  You know it as well as I do, and it wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t us.  People marry people they don’t love every day, and if they’re good people and they try, they come to love each other.  That’s what Mother and Father did.  And I’d marry a good person…and I’d try…and it would happen eventually.  That’s what I have to do, Jon.  I can’t let our family die out.”  She put a hand on his shoulder, so lightly.  “And you should try too.  I want you to be happy.”

“You’re not acting like it,” he said. 

He regretted the words as soon as he said them.  Sansa’s face stiffened, and she drew herself up.  “I wasn’t put on earth to make you happy,” she said.  “I can’t force you to do anything, Jon.  Marry Queen Daenerys or don’t marry her.  It’s your choice.  But don’t refuse her because of me.”  She rose from her seat.  “I have many people to meet with today, Jon.  Perhaps it’s best if we end this discussion for the present.”  It was polite and reasonable, but it was a dismissal. 

He didn’t want to leave, but he didn’t know what else to say.  He rose as well, turning towards the door.  “We’ll talk later?” he asked.

“If you like,” she said.  Her voice and face were missing the warmth he’d come to love.

Brienne was outside the solar, as usual.  Not for the first time, he wondered how much she knew about him and Sansa.  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her—her loyalty to Sansa was the most obvious thing in the world—or that he didn’t want anyone to know what he felt—he’d have been only too happy to be allowed to shout it to the world.  But the idea that a third party might know the ins and outs of their relationship—might know when they’d been sharing kisses or that they’d just quarreled—made him slightly uneasy.  Not knowing what to say, he merely nodded to Brienne, who nodded in return, and set off down the hall.

He didn’t want to do it.  There were many men who would have envied him, he knew; Daenerys Targaryen was beautiful, clever, a queen.  But she wasn’t Sansa.  Sansa said that he might come to love Daenerys in time, but that sounded impossible.  On the other hand, he’d never have believed that he’d come to love Sansa as much as he did.  They hadn’t been close when they were younger, but when they’d seen each other again, when they’d both returned to Winterfell, her face had lit up with an incredible smile, and he’d suspected that his own matched.  They’d spent their days working together to settle the many problems still facing the North, and he’d found himself impressed by how much she knew now, how strategic she could be.  They’d sat up whole nights together talking, remembering the man that they’d both called their father, the boys who had been their brothers, and the girl who had been their sister.  As time went on, Sansa had smiled more and more.  And eventually, one of those nights, she’d leaned in and kissed him, and he’d kissed her back, and it had felt incredibly right.  He’d told her things, now, that he had never told anyone else—about his time at the Wall and his time among the wildlings—and she’d listened and understood.  She’d told him secrets too, and he’d held her close, wanting to kill those men and thanking the gods that she was here with him now, safe, closer to whole than anyone would have had the right to expect.  That they were still able to make each other happy.  That they were able to make a home together, share memories, trust, love.

He’d loved before—Ygritte—and that had been sweet, but it had been nothing like what he felt for Sansa.  Ygritte had been new and exciting, but Sansa was comfort and home.  That was what he wanted and needed now.  He didn’t want Queen Daenerys, who might be his aunt but who was someone he barely knew.  Targaryen or not, he still thought of Winterfell as his home.  Heading off to King’s Landing to be with a woman he didn’t want held no appeal for him.

But Sansa wanted him to do it.  She said that it was best for both of them, and he knew that she had a point.  Daenerys still didn’t think much of the Starks, and while he’d been able to convince her that Sansa meant her no harm, he doubted that she would be very happy with either of them if he chose Sansa over her.  She was a just woman, but it was clear that she had a temper.  And she had dragons.  She wasn’t someone to cross.

As much as he hated to admit it, he knew that Sansa’s other words were true too—that people rarely married for love.  Sansa knew it better than most, of course, from her short-lived marriage to Tyrion Lannister, but it was true of many people, and some of these marriages were, as Sansa said, very happy ones.  And throwing everything aside for love was a dangerous thing to do.  He thought of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen—his own parents, as strange as that was—and the results of their passion, and he knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t go down that road.  If Sansa thought that he should say yes to Daenerys…

They didn’t discuss it again that week, but Jon thought about it on his own quite a bit.  He still didn’t like the idea, and he probably never would, but he was beginning to think that it was his only option.  Even without talking about it, Sansa made it clear that it was what she thought he should do.  She wanted him to marry Queen Daenerys, not her.  If he couldn’t marry Sansa, there was no compelling reason not to marry Daenerys.  Except that he loved Sansa.  His thoughts went around in circles, getting him nowhere.

He raised the topic with Sansa at supper one night.  “I’m sorry for what I said the other day,” he began.  “That you weren’t acting like you wanted me to be happy.  That wasn’t…that wasn’t right of me.”

Sansa looked up from her plate.  “Thank you, Jon.”

“Anyway,” he said, “I’m going to answer Queen Daenerys’s letter.”

 “And what are you going to tell her?” Sansa asked.  Her voice was even; if she’d sounded even a bit upset, he likely would have thrown the whole idea aside.  But it seemed that she really did want this.

“I’m going to tell her yes,” he said.

Sansa nodded.  “I’ll miss you,” she said quietly, “but I think it’s the right choice, Jon.”

He answered the letter that night and sent it off with a raven before he had the chance to change his mind.  He knew that he had to give up Sansa now—it would be his duty as a husband.  He could never kiss her again, and perhaps he could manage that.  But he wasn’t sure that he could never think about his feelings for her.  Duty hadn’t stopped him before, after all, when he’d broken his vows to the Night’s Watch with Ygritte.  He wondered if he would be able to keep himself from imagining Sansa when he lay with Daenerys.  He had never lain with Sansa; he’d dreaded the thought of getting a bastard on her or of making her think that he only wanted to use her for her body.  But now there was a part of him that very much wished he had.

Jon spent the next weeks preparing for his journey to King’s Landing.  He and Sansa talked frequently, even affectionately, but it wasn’t what it had been.  They proposed visits that they both knew would only be painful; they talked about what Winterfell needed rather than about what they felt.  But when it was his last night there, he felt the need of something more, of a goodbye that meant something, and he went to look for her.

She wasn’t in the solar or the great hall, in the godswood or the sept, and finally he headed in the direction of her chambers, feeling slightly uncomfortable.  She’d taken the chambers that had once been her mother’s, a part of the castle where he still felt less at ease, and the thought of talking to her in her bedchamber seemed almost too intimate.  When he reached the end of the hallway, though, he saw a towering figure at the chamber door.  Brienne was never far from Sansa, and so Sansa had to be in there, and if he wanted to talk to her he had to go in.

“Brienne,” he said.  “Is Lady Sansa within?”  Brienne nodded.  “Might I see her?”

“If she wishes,” Brienne said.  She stepped aside, and Jon knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Sansa’s voice called, and Jon stepped into the room, pulling the door to behind him.

Sansa was already preparing for bed; she was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair, wearing only a shift.  She looked up as he came in, and her face was startled.  “Jon!”

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t mean to disturb you.  I just…I wanted to say goodbye properly.”

Sansa’s face softened.  “Don’t apologize, Jon.  I’m glad you came.  Here, sit.”  She gestured to a chair, and he took a seat across from her.

They had so little time left that he had no desire to pretend his feelings were anything other than what they were.  “Gods, Sansa,” he said.  “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

Sansa’s breathing sounded shaky.  “Queen Daenerys is a very lucky woman,” she said.

“I don’t love her,” Jon said.  “You know I don’t.”

“I know,” Sansa said.  “But you’re a good man, Jon.  You could make any woman happy.”  She bit her lip; it was a familiar expression to him, and he watched her face.  He hated seeing her sad now.  He knew that he would picture her again and again in the future, and thinking of this would hurt; he hope that he would be able to call to mind images of her smiling, laughing, looking at him affectionately.  She reached out and took his hand in her own.  “You’ve made me happy, Jon.  Happier than anyone’s ever made me.  I didn’t…I didn’t think I could be that happy.  Not now.  So thank you.”

He almost didn’t want to hear this, to know just how happy he made her when he wouldn’t have the chance to do it anymore.  “Why did you tell me to say yes?” he asked, the words coming out in a rush.

“It’s for the best,” she said, even as her voice was getting shakier and shakier.  “She’d be so angry if you didn’t, Jon…angry at both of us…and I have to think about the North now.  I’m all the North has.”  Her hand squeezed his.  “I wish it wasn’t that way, Jon.  I wish there were more of us left…I wish it wasn’t just me…”  She choked out a laugh.  “I wish we could just live for love like in a song.”  It had only been six years, but it seemed that the Sansa who sat before him now was ages older than his younger sister who had so loved songs.  He thought it was one of the saddest things he knew.

“I love you,” he told her.  “I love you so much, Sansa.”  He half-wished he hadn’t said it—he didn’t want to make this hurt her more—but she leaned across the gap between their chairs and embraced him then, her grip tight, her mouth against his ear.

“I love you too,” she said.  “I love you too, Jon.”  She had always kissed him sweetly, but when she kissed him now, it was desperate, and he could do nothing but kiss back, again and again and again. 

She had somehow ended up in his lap.  He wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but his body was certainly very aware of it.  He tried to shift his hips away from her, but she gripped him still more tightly.  “Come to bed with me,” she said.  “Please.”

“I…Sansa…no.  We can’t.”

“You don’t want to?”

Jon looked at her.  “Can you honestly believe that I don’t want to?”

“Then we can,” she said.  “Please, Jon.”

“We can’t,” he said.  “What if I got a child on you?”

“There are ways not to get a child,” Sansa said. 

“It’s not just that,” Jon said.  “I can’t do that to you, Sansa.  I’m leaving tomorrow—I can’t—I can’t just take you and abandon you.  I can’t hurt you like that.  I’m not going to hurt you like—like—”

“Like the others did?” she asked, and when he nodded, she cupped his face in her hands and looked at him very seriously.  “That was different, Jon.  I want to do this.  I want you to make love to me.  And I know I might miss you even more afterwards, but I still want to.  I haven’t…I haven’t ever been able to choose this.  Please.  Please.”  He was leaving her tomorrow, going to marry another woman.  But if he could do this last thing for her, he would.  He nodded then and stood up, her body still wrapped around his, and they moved to the bed.

“Tell me how I can please you,” he said, watching her as she pulled her shift over her head.  She’d always been beautiful in his fantasies, but the reality, as he saw it now, was far beyond what he’d dreamed.

“Take your clothes off,” she said.  “I want to see you, Jon.  And then please… please… just touch me.”

He pulled off his shirt, breeches, and smallclothes, clumsy with want and with the feeling of her eyes on him.  When he was naked, she grabbed for him, pulling him against her again, kissing his lips, his jawline, his neck, his chest.  “You’re so beautiful,” he told her.

“Kiss me,” she murmured.  And Jon kissed her in return, starting with her lips and moving down. 

There was still a part of his mind that was worried about hurting her, about making her remember things that she would rather forget, and he fell into asking her permission before each new touch.  “May I kiss you here?  Is this all right?”

“Yes,” she answered him every time.  “Yes.  I want you, Jon.”  The look on her face only drove him on.  All he wanted was to please her; he barely thought about his own pleasure as he moved his lips down her body, as he kissed and licked at her sex and heard the sounds she made in response.  It was only when she tensed and shook and cried out, “Jon!” as she came that he began to think about the way his cock was aching.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to think about it long.  Sansa grabbed him again and pushed him back against the pillows, climbing atop him.  “I love you, Jon,” she said, and she took his cock in her hand and slid it inside her.

They did not make love for very long.  She felt so good that he was worried about lasting, and he pulled out of her when he could tell that he was close, not wanting to even risk a child.  She put her hand on his cock then, and he slipped his between her legs.  It took very few strokes of her hand to make him come, and, afterwards, he moved his fingers over her sex until she reached her pleasure for the second time.

He didn’t know how to feel when they were done—happy?  Sad?  Guilty?  Sansa rested her face against his neck.  “I don’t want you to go,” she said, and he could feel the tears in her eyes.

“I don’t want to go either,” he said.  “Do you want me to stay, Sansa?  If you want me to I’ll—”

“You can’t,” she said.  “Especially now that you’ve told her yes.  It would be even worse.”  She sat up.  “Thank you, Jon.  That felt good.  I don’t think…I don’t think I can be brave about this much longer, so please just kiss me one more time and leave me.  And then we’ll say goodbye in the morning.”

Their last kiss was slow and tender.  “I love you,” Jon told her again.  He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I love you,” she said.  She watched him as he dressed.  “Good night.”

“Good night, Sansa.”  And with that, he left.

Brienne was still at the door, and Jon realized with a shock that they certainly hadn’t been very quiet.  Brienne must know that he and Sansa hadn’t just been talking.  At this point, he didn’t really mind, though.  Brienne wouldn’t tell anyone.  She loved Sansa too—in a different way than he did, but she would do anything to keep Sansa safe and happy.

“Look after her,” he said.

Brienne nodded.  “Of course,” she said.  She was quiet for a moment, and then she added, “She’s very strong, you know.  It will be hard for her, but I think…I think she’ll be all right.”

“I hope so,” Jon said.

“Take care,” Brienne said.

“You as well,” Jon said.  He walked down the hall.

He knew that Brienne was right.  Sansa was the strongest woman he knew.  She had come through terrible things.  She would come through this too. 

He hoped he would do the same. 


End file.
